Belmonte

The wind hits first. It barrels across the meseta, whistles through wheat stubble and rattles the aluminium blades of the distant wind turbines. Then, on the ridge ahead, the silhouette sharpens: a fifteenth-century fortress with star-pointed battlements that Charlton Heston once rode past in El Cid. You have just climbed 806 m above sea level, and Madrid is still only 90 minutes away by car. Welcome to Belmonte, a town of 1,800 souls, one supermarket, zero cashpoints, and more medieval masonry than seems strictly fair.

A Castle That Earns Its Keep

Guards open the drawbridge at 10:00 sharp. Be among the first ten visitors and you will have the ramparts to yourself; by 11:30 the coach parties from the capital begin to spill out, selfie sticks at the ready. Entry is €6 and includes an English leaflet—ask, because staff keep them behind the desk. Inside, the restoration is immaculate to the point of squeaky: new lime mortar smells faintly of toothpaste, and the armoury displays reproduction swords that would make a re-enactor weep with joy. Look past the polish, though, and the bones are genuine. The star-shaped floor plan is original, dictated by Juan Pacheco, Marquess of Villena, who knew a thing or two about siege warfare. From the western tower the view slides 40 km south across La Mancha’s ocean of vineyards; on a clear April morning you can watch the shadow of a single cloud moving like a blue whale over the villages.

Climb down the narrow spiral, then duck into the attached chapel. The alabaster retablo survived Napoleon’s troops, the 1936 shelling, and a botched nineteenth-century “improvement” that turned one aisle into a schoolroom. Restoration finished in 2017; the colours are back to their garnet-and-gold swagger, but the builders deliberately left one block pock-marked. It is a quiet reminder that history here is patched, not repainted.

Streets Built For Shade, Not Speed

Belmonte’s old walls form a lopsided pentagon. You can walk their fragments in twenty minutes, although the footing is uneven and handrails are optimistic afterthoughts. Within the enclosure the streets are barely two donkeys wide, the houses the colour of dry biscuit. Doorways sit low; summer highs of 38 °C have taught generations to keep the sun outside. Notice the coats of arms carved above the lintels—wolves, lightning bolts, a rather smug-looking stag. Each marks a family who bankrolled one of the Catholic Monarchs’ campaigns. The stone is soft; rub your thumb over the shield of the Casa de Lara and you will dislodge a shower of ochre grit. Conservationists wince; local children treat it as a free souvenir.

Halfway along Calle de los Álamos the Casa-Museo de Fray Luis de León announces itself with a brass plaque and a life-size cardboard cut-out of the Augustinian poet holding a Kindle. He was born here in 1527; the museum keeps his university chair and the ink-stained desk from Salamanca. Entry is by donation—drop a euro in the box and the caretaker will flick on the lights long enough for you to photograph the manuscript of The Names of Christ. If the door is locked, the bar opposite serves a perfectly acceptable cortado while you wait for the key-keeper to finish her cigarette.

Food That Sticks To The Ribs

By 13:30 the smell of rabbit and bay drifts from doorways. Belmonte lunches are agricultural: thick pottery dishes, bread used as cutlery, wine poured from a height to knock the dust off. In Restaurante El Molino, on Plaza de San Bartolomé, the gazpacho manchego arrives looking like a British casserole that has been sent away and come back fluent in Spanish. Flattened squares of torta bread soak up game stock; ask for conejo rather than partridge if you prefer the taste of farmyard to field. Vegetarians get pisto—Spain’s answer to ratatouille—plus a fried egg on top for protein. Pudding is usually ignored; instead order the semicurado Manchego. Aged four months, it still tastes of milk and thyme, and the waiter will carve it translucent at the table. A glass of local clarete, chilled in the freezer for ten minutes, costs €2.50 and matches the cheese better than logic suggests.

Warning: kitchens close at 16:00 and nothing reopen until 20:30 at the earliest. If you need to keep British hours, buy supplies at the Spar on the bypass before you enter the walls. Sunday lunchtime the supermarket shuts too; petrol is available only from a card-only pump on the industrial estate.

When The Sun Drops, The Temperature Follows

Belmonte is 400 m higher than the surrounding plain; after dusk the thermometer can plummet 12 °C in an hour even in July. Bring a fleece for the walk back to the hotel. The smartest beds are in the Parador de Belmonte, a converted fifteenth-century convent that kept the cloister and added underfloor heating. Doubles from €110 including VAT, cheaper mid-week November to March when the castle is floodlit and coach traffic is nil. Budget travellers stay at Hostal Los Huertos, ten minutes down the hill; rooms are €35, clean, and open onto a courtyard where swallows dive-bomb the swimming pool at dusk.

A Hike With No Trees, Big Sky

The tourist office lends a photocopied map of two circular walks. The shorter (5 km, 1 h 15) skirts the Ermita de Nuestra Señora de Gracia and returns through vineyards whose posts are painted blue to denote the house wine of the local cooperative. There is no shade; carry water and a hat. The longer loop (12 km) reaches the Cerro de San Cristóbal, an Iron-Age fort now occupied by mobile-phone masts. From the summit La Mancha spreads like a pale green tablecloth; on windy days the turbines sync their blades like swimmers, a hypnotic 40-second rhythm. Neither path is way-marked to British standards—cairns and the occasional splash of yellow paint have to suffice. Turn an ankle and the nearest farm is usually within shouting distance.

Winter Versus Summer

January brings snow perhaps twice; the castle closes if the battlements ice over. On the plus side you will share the ramparts with only the caretaker’s dog. Spring (mid-March to May) is the sweet spot: wild chamomile between the stones, daytime 18 °C, night-time 5 °C. July and August bake; the town schedules its medieval market for the first weekend of August purely to prove it can. Expect falconry displays, synthetic mead, and a soundtrack of Celtic drums that would puzzle Cervantes. Autumn smells of crushed grapes; the cooperative offers free tastings on 12 October, feast of the Virgen del Pilar, but you need to book at the tourist office the day before.

Getting Here, Getting Out

Madrid-Barajas to Belmonte is 170 km, almost all motorway. Take the A-3 to Tarancón, then the CM-412; the final 20 km crosses rolling steppe so empty the road signs warn of crossing aircraft. Public transport exists but requires monastic patience: one Alsa coach daily from Estación Sur at 15:15, arriving 17:45, returning at 07:00 next morning. Miss it and you are staying the night—perhaps what the town intended all along.

Belmonte will not change your life. It will give you a castle you can circumnavigate in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, cheese that tastes of the field it came from, and a wind that scours the dust off modern life. Stay overnight, let the tour buses leave, and you will hear what 1,800 people sound like when they reclaim their streets: cutlery clatter, a television two rooms away, someone practising scales on a trumpet. It is enough.